


Back from the toilet

by Scoby



Series: Reylo metafiction [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action Figure Therapy, Almost Kiss, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Ben Solo Deserved Better, Canon Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Humor, Meta, Post-Canon Fix-It, Redeemed Ben Solo, Star Wars Merch, Star Wars Premiere, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, THIGH GRAB, Temporary Character Death, The World between Worlds is Earth, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, is that how the force works?, reylo kiss, temporary suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: “So you’re not..?” Her gaze flicked down to the hole in his shirt and some sudden realisation flooded over her face. “Gosh! There’s no way you’d have seenthatcoming. Are you..? Are you reallyhim?”“Listen, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’d really want to get back to Rey, so if you know her, could you help me find her? Please?”“Find her? Uh, well, I know her but it’s, sort of,verycomplex to find her here.”“What do you mean? Where are we?”“In New York.”
Relationships: Ben Solo & Original Character(s), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo metafiction [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099463
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fix-it came to my mind after TROS anniversary. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sorry, no spaceport here. And even if there was, your galaxy is far far away.”

Rey’s dead eyes staring into emptiness. That was beyond what Ben could handle. There had to be something he could do. Even if he would himself perish in the attempt, it would not matter, not as long as Rey would still have a chance.

He placed a hand on her abdomen and focused. He transformed his whole self into a channel for the Force to flow through to her. And when it was not enough, he poured all of his own life force in, too. That did it. Rey’s hand clasped his own and she sat up, eyes lighting back up. And when those eyes focused on his, her whole face transformed into the most beautiful smile Ben had ever seen.

And yet, the wonders were not over. She lifted a hand to caress his cheek and kissed him. Just like he had wanted to do so many times – in her hut on Ahch-To; in the turbolift when taking he to Snoke; after killing Snoke and his guards; even when soaked in cold water on the Death Star ruin.

But always something else had come in between or one of them had shied away. Or maybe Rey had been waiting for him to turn, which he could not blame her for. Now that she had got her way, she seemed to waste no time, and he immediately loved it. So much that it made him laugh out of pure joy for the first time in his adult life. He wanted so much more of this, so much more of Rey now that she finally was here in his arms and…

He made a move to wrap his arms tighter around her waist and pull her into a new kiss, but something was lost from his arms. The feeling of the warmth of Rey’s body disappeared and his arms went limp. Next, life drained from his legs and upwards through his body. Then, his heart stopped beating and he fell on the ground on his back.

Or his body must have fallen on the ground. But he was still conscious of falling, falling and falling way through the ground and through the inner layers of the planet and somewhere where there was no material around him anymore. Until his back hit something.

He cringed in pain but quickly realised to his delight that his back was the only part that was hurting now. His recently shattered ribs and leg seemed to be miraculously fine. Or did he even have those anymore? He touched his abdomen and yes, he had hands that could feel it, the whole horizontal texture of his sweater he was still wearing, even the hole that Rey had stabbed in it.

Ben opened his eyes but closed them quickly again, as the brightness of the surrounding lighting nearly blinded him. He pushed himself to sitting against something cold that his back had just hit. And then he tried opening his eyes again, this time more carefully, squinting first to give himself time to adjust to the lights.

He was in a public restroom.

The toilet seat looked different from what he was used to. It was all white and cold, looking a bit like a large stormtrooper helmet. Judging by the voices he heard from outside the closet where he found himself in, he was on the ladies’ side. Kriff. How would he get out without them noticing and getting mad at him? Or did that even matter anymore, now that he most likely was dead? He staggered up to sit on the toilet seat cover and waited.

A few vividly chatting women flushed their toilets and washed their hands. When the door shut after them, the whole room seemed to fall silent. Probably it was safe to get out and start figuring out where he was. So he pushed his door open and gasped at what he saw:

Rey was standing in front of the sink in the empty restroom with her back towards him. Her face was buried in her hands but the brown hair tied in three buns, the white clothing with the hood draping back from her shoulders, her arm wraps and the belt with her lightsaber were all unmistakable. But to Ben’s horror, something was terribly wrong: she was unhappy. Her back and shoulders were shuddering in the rhythm of quiet sobs.

“Rey”, he breathed out, strode right up to her and grasped her tiny shoulder.

She lifted her face from her hands and turned to look at him with teary, bewildered eyes. And right then he saw that it was not Rey. The eyes were ocean grey and skin a notch paler, without Rey's freckles. Even the hair was a lighter shade of brown. It was somebody else dressed up exactly like Rey.

“Oh, sorry, I mistook you for someone else.” Ben hastily let go of the strange woman’s shoulder.

“Rey?” she asked.

“Yes, uh, do you know her?”

“Well, of course.”

“Then I guess you know you do look a lot like her.”

“That’s kind of my point.”

When Ben looked even more puzzled, she made a small ta-dah gesture to better show off her outfit. Then she scanned him from head to toe and said: "You've done a good job, too."

Ben still stared at her blankly, causing her to gape in confusion.

“So you’re not..?” Her gaze flicked down to the hole in his shirt and some sudden realisation flooded over her face. “Gosh! There’s no way you’d have seen _that_ coming. Are you..? Are you really _him_?”

“Listen, I don’t know who you think I am, but I’d really want to get back to Rey, so if you know her, could you help me find her? Please?”

“Find her? Uh, well, I know her but it’s, sort of, _very_ complex to find her here.”

“What do you mean? Where are we?”

“In New York.”

“What’s a New York?”

“It’s a city. On Earth.”

“Earth? Well, in that case, could you just show me the way to the nearest spaceport. I’m sure I can find my way from there.”

“Sorry, no spaceport here. And even if there was, your galaxy is far far away. Too far to travel even through hyperspace.”

Ben kicked the nearest closet in frustration so that its walls rumbled.

“What do I do then?”

“There has to be another way… Look, my friend is waiting outside and he’s a total Star Wars nerd. I’m sure we can figure something out with him.”

“What’s a Star Wars nerd?”

“Let’s just say, somebody who knows a lot about you and your… stuff.”

She dried her tears, visibly cheered up by having a mission to work on, and grabbed his arm to steer him towards the door.

“By the way, my name is Alice.” She stopped to offer him her hand. When he stared down at it in confusion, she said: “We usually shake it when we meet new people.”

She used her other hand to pick up his so that she could grab a firm hold of it and shake it.

“Ben”, he said as he squeezed her hand back, though stopping it quickly when noticing that he had applied enough force to make her flinch.

“I know”, Alice said with a smile and continued her way out of the restroom.

Waiting outside, leaning against the wall of the corridor, was FN-2187. Or by now, Ben already knew to expect that it was more probably somebody else who was just dressed like him.

He reached immediately for Alice’s shoulder in an affectionate way that made Ben instinctively wince.

“Are you feeling any better, Alice? Shall I drive you home? I guess we all just need to sleep on it. That was not the way to end the saga, but I think we just need time to get over it.”

“Looks like we just got a chance to fix it. Rick, I’d like you to meet Ben. Ben, this is my friend Rick.”

“Holy shit!” Rick gasped, barely remembering to hold out his hand for Ben to shake. “What happened to you?”

“Well, I found Rey dead on Exegol and I transferred life force…”

“Yes, I saw _that_ part”, Rick cut him off. “But what happened after it? How did you end up here?”

“That’s what we were hoping _you_ to speculate on”, Alice said. “How he ended up here and especially how to get him back. You’re the freakiest Star Wars nerd I know. If anyone can figure something out, it’s you.”

Rick’s chest visibly swelled as he turned on his heels and gestured Alice and Ben to follow.

“Right, so many fascinating scenarios here! We need to get to my place.”

They all sat in some kind of a closed roof speeder with wheels rolling on the ground that Alice and Rick called a car. It was night-time outside and loads of similar transports crawled in long lines around the city. But Rick did not seem bothered by the slow pace. He was already busy with forming his theory.

“So we saw you disappear with just your shirt left behind with Rey, which is a bit weird because now you’re wearing it. But anyways, I think we can almost assume that you were in a way or another absorbed to the Force. Also, we did _not_ see you appear as a Force ghost, so that would suggest that the Force channelled you in some other way, and that ended up here. Did you say you found him in the toilet?”

“Not technically in the toilet bowl, but in the room, yes”, Alice confirmed.

“Symbolically, that would point at discarded stuff like sewage water or flushed out emotions. That could match with the destruction of the temple on Exegol, and also expressing your feelings towards Rey. So maybe looking for reverse symbolism related to her current location could take you back.”

“Did you say you saw my shirt left behind with her?” Ben asked.

“Yes.”

“And did you see what happened to her after?”

“Of course.”

“Is she ok?”

Ben’s voice was so full of distress that Alice leaned forward from the back seat to give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

“Yes, she is. She made it out of Exegol alive. And we saw her celebrate the end of the war with her friends and bury Luke and Leia’s lightsabers on Tatooine. She seemed basically happy, but it’s difficult to make a full conclusion about her emotional state. It was not shown on-camera how the separation from you affected her, though we suspect that it might be severe.”

“Exactly”, Rick confirmed. “After all, you’re a dyad in the Force. There should be serious consequences to the balance in the Force if a dyad is separated by death. Chances are that the Force is already trying to course-correct and bounce you back. It might even be impossible for you to die without Rey. That would get you stuck in the World between Worlds. And if that’s the case, judging by the circumstances, the World between Worlds would be our world, which would be absolutely fascinating.”

“You seem to know a lot about us”, Ben said. “And about the Force. Are you Sensitive?”

Rick burst into laughter.

“I wish. But no. The Force doesn’t work on this planet. It’s too… Holy shit!”

He was forced to immediately change his mind when Ben held out a hand towards the Han Solo dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. Without touching, he made the dice disentangle and fly to his hand. Somebody honked in a car behind them as Rick made a hazardous wobble, almost drifting to the neighbouring lane.

“Rick, your turn!” Alice reminded.

“Oops…” He risked one more unorthodox jiggle when he turned a bit too late and passed finely by an opposing car before correcting his course on the right lane on his own street.

But Ben did not even seem to notice. He had been on a lot worse rides, and now he was mesmerised by holding again the dice he had thought to be forever lost to him – the only memory of his father. When Rick parked, Ben floated the dice in the air again and started to push them back to their place with a quiet sigh.

“Go ahead, you can keep them”, Rick said. “I saw that you lost them in your universe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. Those mean a lot more to you than to me. Plus, they only cost twenty bucks.”

“How much is twenty bucks? I can pay you…”

Ben reached for his pockets but realised what Rick had already guessed: he had run off to Exegol with no cash with him.

“No need to. Those are yours. Just let me help you and it’s enough of payment for me.”

“Thank you.” Confused but thankful, Ben slid the dice in his pocket.

Rick turned off his car, and they all went into the house and took the elevator up to his flat. When he opened the door (by some kind of hinge mechanism on the side instead of sliding) and they entered, Ben was first faced with a large picture of himself, Rey, Luke and his mother. Below their faces, his attention was drawn to a squadron of skim speeders that flared up red clouds in their wake when passing over a flat, white terrain.

“Is that - from Crait?” he asked.

“Yep”, Rick confirmed.

“So you really know everything that has happened to us?”

“Pretty much”, Alice said.

Ben’s mind went quickly back through a scatter of memories from the past years. Had these people even seen him in Rey’s hut on Ahch-To, when she was all wet and adorable when illuminated by the fire and when she offered her hand for him to touch despite the vastness of space between them? He had firmly believed that the moment was private. Even though Luke had seen some of it, he had not seen everything and especially not heard them talk, which had definitely been private.

And if others had seen things like that, was there a possibility that they had seen things even inside of his own head? He decided to test it cautiously.

“Did you see that dream about her, too?”

Alice’s eyes lit up in curiosity. “What dream?”

“Nothing”, he hurried to reply. If Alice had to ask that way, she certainly had not seen it.

“Listen, Ben, I’m a big deal in your fandom. I have thousands of followers online. And after tonight’s premiere, they’re going to be devastated for months about your death and Rey being left without her dyad and back to the desert and not anymore an inspiring nobody but a Palpatine turned Skywalker. They’re dying for any words of comfort and hope. If I could confirm to them that you’ve had wet dreams about her…”

Ben blushed and she hurried to correct herself:

“…I mean, even fully decent dreams involving loving thoughts, that could do it. That could be comforting information they could cling to in these trying times.”

“It’s private”, he muttered.

“Alright, I understand. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be pushy. If you don’t want to, I won’t even tell anyone I met you.”

“I appreciate that.”

They left the poster and followed Rick to his living room where he was already standing by the bookshelf with a book open in his hands. Curiosity drew Ben next to him to browse the titles on the shelf. There were several visual dictionaries, and many titles about the Jedi and the Force. He had never seen this many books on paper. Even in the Jedi temple’s library, most of the literature had been stored in datacubes. On this planet, there seemed to be no shortage of paper.

Ben pulled one book out and browsed the pages. His attention was drawn by a section about lightsaber building. He would have to refresh his memory now that he had thrown his previous weapon away. But he did not get far with reading the instructions before Rick lifted his eyes from the book in his own hands.

“I’d say we try this first.”

He was pointing at a paragraph entitled _How to get out of the World between Worlds_. Ben skimmed the words. It seemed like instructions to a rather simple meditation to tune into channels in the Force that could be used to skip from one plane of existence to another. He shrugged and made a move to sit on the floor to give it a try, but Rick grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Oh, but what kind of a host am I? You surely don’t want to attempt that with an empty stomach. Let’s order pizza first.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll love it”, Alice said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, we'll see more of Rick's Star Wars merch, and maybe Alice is going to show Ben something online, too. They are also going to make their first attempt on bringing Ben home


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you think people wouldn’t watch that fight on slow motion over and over again?"

“It will take about half an hour”, Rick said after making their order. “Do you want to see my action figures?”

He gestured towards the corner of the living room and they all kneeled down in front of a low shelf filled with an assembly of little dolls. Ben spotted himself, both with and without Kylo Ren’s helmet, and three copies of Rey in different outfits. He picked up the one that looked like her just as he had first met her.

“They're beautiful”, he said, with more longing in his voice than he would have wanted to give away in front of strangers.

“Aren’t they? And quite versatile”, Alice said. “See, they can even do the Thigh Grab!”

“Alice!” Rick warned, but Alice had already snatched the figures of Rey in her grey outfit and Ben without the helmet and proceeded to bend their midsections so that Rey was leaning back over him and move Rey’s arm back so that her hand hit approximately Ben’s thigh.

“Did you see _that_ , too?” Ben gasped. “I mean, it passed so fast I barely noticed it myself.”

“Do you think people wouldn’t watch that fight on slow motion over and over again? Have a look.”

She fiddled for a moment with a device that looked like it could be a small holoviewer. But it did not show any holos. When she turned it towards him, he saw it only had a flat screen that showed an image of himself and Rey with lightsabers in their hands and praetorian guards around them, frozen in the position with Rey’s hand on his thigh.

The exact memory of it had fused in his mind with imagination after he had pictured too many times her hand creeping higher towards his hip and then closer towards his centre. Now that he was reminded about what had exactly happened, he was shocked to find out that he had not exaggerated as much as he had thought. Her hand was indeed pretty high. And he had thought that everyone who had seen it had died in the following moments. Apparently, he had been wrong about that.

Alice swiped her finger over the screen to show more of similar pictures. Some with very indecent subtitles. Some with a disturbing zoom in on his crotch and Rey’s hand. And some drawings where Rey touched him – exactly _there_ , just like he had imagined. He blushed again and Alice put the device away in her pocket. When Rick shoved his elbow to her side and glared at her, she mumbled:

“Uh, sorry, maybe we all got a bit too carried away. We just – found that fight really hot. And you’re really hot – I mean, you with Rey. And now there’s no going back. You’re already all over the Internet.”

“What’s Internet?”

“It’s like your HoloNet.”

“So it’s everywhere?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Ben sighed. “If you know this well about everything between us, do you think others – in my galaxy…?”

Alice hurried to pat his back. “Of course not. Your secret is safe with us. It’s all – World between Worlds stuff, isn’t it?”

She cast a prompting glance at Rick and he nodded, only slightly reluctantly. But it was enough to put Ben at ease again, and he continued examining the shelf of action figures. There was his whole family, all the way back to his great-grandmother whom he had only seen in poor-quality holos. Rick even had two copies of his parents, in two different ages. He picked up the younger versions of them.

“This is how I remember them best”, he said half to himself, half to the others. “They fought a lot and laughed a lot, and everything was still so fun and care-free. I miss them.”

“Maybe they’ll hear you if you talk to them”, Alice suggested. “This is the World between Worlds, you know.”

“If you want to be alone, we won’t disturb you.” Rick gestured towards his bedroom.

Ben got up, walked into the bedroom and pushed the door shut behind him. It made such a satisfying click when closing that he had to open it again and close it with the Force, this time a bit louder. His fingers itched to do it again with a real bang, but he reminded himself that he was a guest and sat down on the bed with the action figures in his lap.

He lost the track of time talking to them. It was relieving to speak his heart out without interruption and without being rushed when he had to take lengthy moments to think. He spoke about everything he loved and hated about them, all the disappointments they had given him and all the ways he had felt like betrayed, ignored and let down.

Once that was all out of him, he was filled with forgiveness, both for them and for himself. For the first time in his life, it looked clear that they had all done their best. It was the interference of Snoke and Palpatine that had twisted their best efforts, but nothing could change it that those were still their best, loving efforts.

Eventually, he was in tears, explaining to the tiny figures everything he was thankful for and how much he missed them. When he finally seemed to be out of things to say and tears to cry, he dried his cheeks on his sleeve, opened the strange door with the Force and walked out into a mouth-watering smell.

“Right on time, Solo!” Rick’s voice came from his kitchen.

Ben returned the action figures to their place on the shelf and followed the voice to the kitchen. There he saw that Rick had discarded his pilot jacket and changed to a long-sleeved shirt with a picture of stormtrooper head in the front. Alice was still wearing her white pants but had opened her hair and changed the top and Rey’s accessories to a light beige sweater that looked so baggy on her that it was probably borrowed from Rick.

The two of them had spread out four shallow boxes open on the table and were cutting large, circular-shaped pastries into eight triangular slices. Alice offered one in his hands and demonstrated how she bit the tip out of her own. The white topping stretched into narrow strands between her mouth and the pastry that they called pizza.

Ben tried the same and had to agree that it was delicious. The only downside was that the white topping was very difficult to handle. He swiped the back of his palm over his mouth to get the traces of it out.

“That’s cheese”, Alice explained. “Rey would love this, wouldn’t she?”

“Maybe… I don’t know”, Ben said thoughtfully.

“Wait, you don’t…?” Alice looked dumbstruck.

Rick rolled his eyes as her confusion. “Yes, Alice, canonically they haven’t…”

“Oh, yes, I’ve read so much fanfiction that I forgot that they haven’t done it in canon.”

“Done what?” Ben asked, close to losing his nerve at the fact that these strangers seemed to know so much more about him and Rey than he did himself.

“Eaten together!” Alice replied. “You should see it. She absorbs greasy food like a sponge. She always eats with her fingers whenever possible and licks them and her lips clean afterwards. And she eats your leftovers, straight from your hand if you let her.”

Ben blushed again when picturing what Alice had just described. “How do you know all that?”

“It’s pure logic. Think about it: she's lived the majority of her life as a scavenger with never enough to eat. Abundance of food is like a gift from the Force to her.”

Ben nodded thoughtfully. Her reasoning appeared to make sense. He began digging his memories for restaurants where he should take Rey as soon as he would be back in their galaxy. In the process, he ate two slices of each pizza, all with different fillings but the same cheese topping. Rick and Alice ate two slices of each, too, so that in the end, there were two slices of each left.

“Let’s pack the rest for Rey”, Alice said, shuffled all the slices into one box and closed it.

“Are you sure I can take pizza with me? For traveling between planes of existence?”

“Doesn’t hurt to try. In the worst case, it’ll be left behind here for us to eat, just like your shirt last time.”

“Ok, let’s give it a go then.”

Ben grabbed the pizza box and sat down cross-legged on the living room rug. He read once more through the instructions from the book that was still open on the couch and closed his eyes. But before he could get started, Rick pulled his sleeve.

“One more thing: I’d like to give you these.” He handed Ben the action figures of himself and Rey in her white outfit, just like he had last seen her. “I’d expect that once you get back, you can’t yet be together all the time. There will be people in the Resistance who want you dead or imprisoned or banished, and she’ll have responsibilities as the last Jedi. So you might need to spend some time apart, and I guess the Force bond doesn’t activate every day. But like this, you can have her always with you, and she can have you.”

“Thank you, that’s very thoughtful of you. And thank you, both, for everything.”

He tried to store the figures in his pocket but they did not fit there. So he stuffed them in the corners of the pizza box, even though he could not prevent their feet from touching the greasy fillings and the lid could not be fully closed anymore. Holding the box approximately shut with one hand, he closed his eyes again and focused.

He could feel the Force lazily vibrating around him. But he did not find much happening. Wherever he searched, the Force behaved similarly, like a grey, boundless mass. He had imagined that the World between Worlds would contain a whole labyrinth of channels and chords and wormholes between alternate planes of existence. But now that he was here, he could not find any of those. After trying as long as he could stretch his patience for, he opened his eyes and said:

“It’s not working.”

Rick scratched his head. “Maybe we’re lacking symbolism here… Let’s think to the last place we’ve seen Rey and try to bring that here as an invitation, just like you were invited to the movie theatre restroom on the way here. Let me set it up.”

He spent the following minutes hustling around the flat, even dropping by outside in the inner yard to pick up sand from the sandbox. He sprinkled the sand on the rug around Ben, lit up two candles in front of him and set up rolls of fluffy paper behind him. Rick called them toilet paper rolls and said that they symbolised moisture farm vaporators.

“Ok, you’re all set to go again now. Try to really tune into her, like drop into the feeling of where she is on Tatooine and how you’d experience being there. That should open the portal if the symbolism helps.”

Ben tried to do as Rick suggested. He concentrated on feeling the rays of hot suns on his skin, hearing the shuffle of sand under his feet, smelling the fertilisers used on moisture farms and seeing Rey, smiling, new freckles appearing on her face under the sunlight. Still, the Force did not respond. Nothing opened in any form for him to reach through. He opened his eyes and shook his head.

“I don’t understand”, Rick said and buried his nose back in his book. He picked a couple of other ones from his shelf and skimmed through them, too, but was only left with a puzzled look on his face.

“How about we sleep on it?” Alice’s voice almost disappeared in a yawn. “If the Force is actively trying to course-correct, like you speculated in the car, maybe It will even take Ben back in his sleep and we don’t have to worry about it. And if it doesn’t, we’ll all have fresher thoughts in the morning.”

Since nobody had a better idea, they agreed with her. Rick vacuumed the sand out of the living room rug and cleared the space to set up a guest mattress, pillow and blanket for Ben. For Alice, he gave another blanket to sleep on the couch, as she was the only one short enough to fit on it.

“Don’t hesitate to knock on my door if you need something. I’m chronically insomniac, so I’ll probably be up most of the night anyways. Hope you sleep better”, Rick said as he closed his bedroom door, though light still remained visible through the doorframe. Alice turned off the living room light and wished Ben good night.

At first, it felt unthinkable to fall asleep without his lightsaber at hand. Ever since he had once woken up to the sight of his uncle with an ignited lightsaber in his hands, he had went to bed every single night with the conscious thought that somebody might try to kill him that night. Even now, he considered the possibility of searching through the flat once more for any kind of weapon he could find. But his exhaustion made the decision for him by knocking him out before he could think about it twice.

The next thing he was aware of was climbing up from an endless pit. On the edge, he found Rey laughing with her friends and eating pizza so that her lips and fingertips were gleaming with grease. He crawled towards her but the ground slipped under him so that he barely moved forward. When he finally reached her and touched her back, she turned dead again, pale and staring ahead without blinking. And around her, her friends had multiplied into an army with blaster rifles pointed at him.

He woke up from the dream with a jolt, sprang straight up to sitting and called an imperial star destroyer model from the bookshelf to his hand as a primal impulse to hold some form of a weapon.

“Ben”, Alice whispered. She had left the couch, sat by his side and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Was it a nightmare?”

Ben nodded and let the star destroyer drop from his clutch on the mattress.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“It’s ok.”

Her soft voice was soothing, and her thumb traced a light pattern on his arm. She gazed straight into his eyes and looked a lot like Rey like this, when the only source of light was the street lighting outside. It brought his thoughts back to the nightmare.

“I think I won’t ever make it back”, he said aloud.

“Sure you will. We’ll figure it out.”

“You said she was doing ok, right? What if I go back and ruin it?”

“How could you? You’re a dyad in the Force.”

“Everyone keeps repeating it but I don’t know what it means anymore. After all, I was able to die without her. And she was able to go on without me. And I – maybe I can try to go on without her here.”

He lifted a hand to cup her elbow, and she squeezed his arm and leaned a little closer, close enough that he could smell her. She did not smell like the blood and sweat he had mostly had a chance to smell on Rey. Alice smelled like something more floral. He closed his eyes and tentatively inhaled a bit deeper to examine it. She stirred closer and placed her other hand on his thigh, first cautiously, barely touching it, but when he did not pull away, she let its whole weight fall on it and warm his skin through the fabric of his pants. She leaned her face so close to his that he could feel the air moving when she whispered:

“I can’t deny that I’ve fantasised about this a lot.”

He let his lips part. Inside, he felt almost ready for this. Almost ready to accept that he would never get back to his Rey but that he had found somebody who was somewhat like her. Almost ready to try out if he could move on and live a satisfactory life in this plane of existence. Almost ready, even though it was not entirely fair for Alice that he was imagining her as somebody else right now, was it?

The tip of her nose brushed against his, but then she pulled away and shook her head.

“No, it doesn’t feel right. As much as I want you, I want you more with Rey. Don’t worry. We’ll find a way.”

She shifted her arms around his waist and snuggled into a hug. He tensed at first but gradually relaxed against her. After their breathing had steadied into a shared rhythm, her head suddenly sprang up.

“I know what we need to do!”

“What?”

“Rick had the idea about reverse symbolism but it didn’t work, right? Maybe symbolism is not enough. Maybe you need an actual reverse action.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain you both in the morning. Now we should sleep.”

She kissed his forehead and climbed back on the couch and under the blanket. Ben positioned the star destroyer model next to his pillow before pulling on the blanket and closing his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is Alice's plan? And is it going to work out to reunite the dyad? We'll see in the final chapter


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Think about this seriously, Alice, are you ready to take the risk of potentially sacrificing yourself for a fictional character?”

Ben slept tight with no more nightmares until he woke up into a new delicious smell. When he made it to the kitchen, Rick explained that he was making pancakes.

“Rey would absolutely love it if you’d make these for her for breakfast some time”, Alice said and passed Ben a slip of paper with writing. “Here, I scribbled you the recipe. We use cow’s milk and chicken’s eggs and wheat flour, but I’m pretty sure you can sub with any creature’s milk and eggs and any flour you like.”

Rick let him practice the technique of pouring just the right amount of batter on the well-greased pan, determining the correct time window to turn, and turning with a stylish flip. Soon, it turned out that Ben could make the pancakes even better than Rick or Alice because he could use the Force to sense every stage of the caramelisation of the batter and thus pick an absolutely perfect timing for the turn. After finding that out, Rick let him take care of the rest of the frying.

They sat down to eat and Rick distributed a stack of pancakes on everyone’s plate, demonstrated how much to pour maple syrup on top, and filled for everyone a cup of steaming, brown liquid with a strong smell.

“It’s coffee”, he said as Ben tried a sip from his cup.

“It’s disgusting.” He coughed and put the drink down as far away from under his nose as he could.

Rick smiled sympathetically and adopted his cup. But when Ben tasted the pancakes with maple syrup, he forgot about the coffee. They tasted as delicious as they smelled like, exactly what he would want to make for Rey.

“So, I know what we need to do”, Alice started after adding an extra dose of maple syrup when she was half-way through her stack. “Ben got here when bringing Rey back from death. Now, we need a reverse action.”

“You mean Rey bringing him back?” Rick asked. “But it was deliberately shown that his body disappeared immediately after it happened, so that she was left without that option.”

“No, silly”, Alice sneered. “I mean reverse in a sense that he has to bring somebody back from recent death here, in this plane of existence.”

Rick chuckled. “That’s a cute idea. Now, who do you think will volunteer? Shall we go to the street corner with a sign: Free Force healing! We just kill you first and this gentleman will bring you right back…”

But Alice’s face remained serious. “I volunteer.”

“What!?” Ben and Rick gasped at the same time.

“You heard me. I die, Ben brings me back and gets transported to the galaxy far far away in the process.”

“No no no, Alice!” Rick grasped her shoulder and shook it. “What if it doesn’t work? What if you stay dead?”

“Why wouldn’t it? We already saw that he can do it.”

“But you’re not part of his dyad.”

“Why would that matter? Rey healed the serpent in just the same way.”

“But it was not dead, only injured!”

“I _know_ he can do it! Even though I’m not part of his dyad, Rey is _waiting_ for him on the other side to do it and reunite with her. The Force Itself is waiting for him to do it to restore the balance. That’s got to count for something.”

“Think about this seriously, Alice, are you ready to take the risk of potentially sacrificing yourself for a fictional character?”

“Stop talking about him like he wasn’t even here!”

“You’re doing it, too!”

They both fell silent and slowly turned to look at Ben.

“Would you do it?” Alice asked.

“Well, I know how it works but I’ve only done it on Rey”, Ben responded. “I can’t count on it working on everyone. So I can’t accept you volunteering yourself for me to test it out.”

“There, you see, we have to figure out another way”, Rick said.

Alice raised her eyebrows but neither Rick or Ben showed any sign of coming up with another idea.

“What if it’s not a question of working or not working? What if it’s a question of trust and will? That’s how the Force works, right?” Alice fixed her ocean grey eyes on Ben’s and took hold of his hand over the table. “I trust you. And I believe in you. I fully, in my heart, know that you can heal me. If I was dead, would you sincerely want to bring me back to life?”

Ben did not have to look for the answer for long. “Yes, I would. I really want you to live, and be happy and thrive.”

“That’s it, then. We have everything we need.”

“I’d say we’re missing a pretty important piece”, Rick insisted. “How do we get you dead - _safely_?”

“Do you still have your sleeping pill prescription?” Alice asked.

“Yeah, I never bought them..."

Alice flashed a smile. "I guessed you wouldn't. You'd always prefer to use the extra waking hours on geeking out on Star Wars stuff. Go to the pharmacy to buy them now.”

“That’s drug abuse.”

“What do you want me to do then? Jump off from a Brooklyn bridge tower? What if the healing works only partly and I’m left alive but paralysed for the rest of my life? Sleeping pill overdose is the least risky. And you can stay next to us the whole time with phone ready to call an ambulance if necessary.”

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.” Rick slammed his coffee cup down after the finishing gulp and disappeared to his bedroom to search for his wallet and the prescription he now wished he had never received or at least never told Alice about.

When he returned from the pharmacy, Ben and Alice had cleaned the kitchen and living room and set Ben’s pizza box ready by the couch. Without a word, Alice held out an expecting hand to him. Rick gave the box of pills in her hand, eyes still pleading for her to reconsider. But she strode resolutely to the kitchen, filled a large glass with water from the tap and started swallowing pills.

When the whole box was gone, she made her way towards the living room couch. Before she could reach it, though, Rick stopped her and pulled her into a tight hug. He was shivering and tears trickled from his eyes. Alice hugged him back with a peaceful smile on her own face.

“I’ll be back soon”, she said when they broke apart.

“But what if…?”

“Hushhh.” She lifted her index finger in front of her mouth and laid down on the couch.

Ben watched through the Force how life slowly left her small body. Rick paced back and forth through the room, fiddling with his hands in his pockets and once in a while trying to measure Alice’s pulse on her neck but always ending up frustrated at being too nervous to count it.

When Ben sensed the end of Alice’s heartbeat, he got quickly to work. Just like he had done with Rey, he laid a hand over her stomach and started channelling life force. But it was not as easy. Rey had felt like a sponge for whatever he had to give. It had been like her body was not even separate at all, like they were supposed to share life force in the case of one of them running out.

Alice was a lot more foreign to him. He had to not only channel but really push to get any strands of life to enter her. Still, the strands seemed faint, and he feared they would turn out too faint. What if she would come back but with some permanent damage? No. There was no room for that possibility. Alice had trusted him completely. And she absolutely deserved to live. The bridge to failure was burned. The only option was to be worthy of her trust, even if her body seemed to be repelling his efforts.

 _Relax, take it_ , he said through the Force to her, to her tissues, to her every cell. And little by little, the strands flowing into her picked up strength. Reluctantly but surely, Alice let them fill her. Ben thought about Rey and his family and everything beautiful he had seen in the universe and made a final push where he gathered all love he had ever experienced, topped with the deep, friendly love he felt for Alice herself. He imagined her living and experiencing all the wonders of her home planet, her heart filled with joy and a smile on those lips that looked a bit like Rey’s but were still so unique. And there it was. Alice’s body jerked under his hand and she pushed herself up to sitting, a whole-hearted smile conquering her face.

Ben breathed out a sigh of relief and wrapped her in a hug. She giggled against him and swayed them from side to side. Realising that he would not have much time, Ben let her go and turned around to hug Rick.

“Thank you”, he said to them both, and with his final breath, clasped the pizza box with both hands right as he fell dead on the rug.

It felt again like the falling did not stop at the floor but he fell all the way through the flats below and the ground and the inner layers of the planet. Then, again, he hit something.

It was softer than last time. When he turned to look to his side, he noticed that it was sand. And there was lots of it. When he focused further, he could see buildings arranged like a moisture farm. And twin suns setting behind them. He turned to his other side and saw the shape of a familiar ship. A round astromech droid was rolling towards it. And behind the droid…

“Rey!” he shouted.

The droid and the woman stopped. Ben staggered up to his knees and then all the way on his legs. Thank Force, the pizza box was still next to him on the sand. He picked it up and started walking towards the ship. Then Rey turned and flashed an impossibly radiant smile at him.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“On the ship.”

He could already feel sand inside his shoes and under his clothes. Now that he had found Rey, his new priority was getting out of this planet. Rey nodded in sympathy and continued her way into the Falcon. When they arrived in the cockpit, Ben dug his father’s dice from his pocket and hung them on their place in the ceiling. Rey punched in new coordinates and they took off and set the ship on autopilot.

“What’s that?” Rey pointed at the shallow box Ben was still holding.

“Pizza.” He opened the lid and saw Rey’s eyes grow endearingly bright as she took in the smell. He passed her a slice and she bit off the tip. After a moment of chewing, she made a mixture of a smile and a wince.

“It’s delicious. But there’s sand on it.”

Ben tasted another slice and noticed she was right. But he could not be depressed about it for long because Rey did lick her lips and fingers clean in a breath-taking way, just like Alice had predicted. He had to blink a few times and clear his throat before he could speak again.

“I have something else for you, too.” He picked up his action figure and used his sleeve to wipe it out the worst of the flour and grease before handing it to her.

“Oh, thank you, Ben, this is just like you!”

He cleaned Rey’s action figure with his sleeve, too.

“It’s for the times ahead. I guess you’re going somewhere where I can’t follow yet. Somewhere where people want me dead and…”

“Let’s not speak about that yet.” Rey closed his mouth with her finger. “Just tell me everything that happened to you, and then we go to sleep and forget that anything exists outside of this ship."

“Alright, sounds fine to me. I’ll cook for you something better than sandy pizza in the morning.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see”, he said, took her head between his hands and kissed her.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you liked in the comments and find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/IamScoby) :)


End file.
